Power plants and other industrial facilities, such as desalination plants, often require large amounts of cooling or other process related water. The required water may be obtained from a large water source, such as an ocean, lake or river. Some of the cooling systems are referred to as once-through cooling systems since the warmed up cooling water is returned to the natural body of water after one pass through the cooling system. Often there is a water intake structure constructed near the plant to allow water to be provided to the plant from the water source. These intake structures typically must have screens or some other type of filtering system to significantly reduce the number of fish, fish larvae and fish eggs contained within the water pumped through the plant. Because the size of fish larvae and eggs is relatively small, it is often difficult to economically design a screen or other filter system with sufficiently small openings to prevent entrapment of the fish larvae and eggs, or, in other words, to prevent aqueous organisms from flowing through the cooling system of the plant. Further, if the velocity of water flow through the filter is too large, fish may become impinged onto the surface of the screen. The survival rate of impinged and entrapped fish is very low. Accordingly, what is needed in the art is an improved intake structure that provides an economical solution to efficiently reduce the impingement and entrapment of fish, fish larvae and fish eggs for water intakes of power and other large industrial plants.